The living-rooms of people in later life
The living-rooms of people in later life
are sometimes a mess
as though they also must over time
droop and unhinge.
Most, though, are tidy
their lines of reach and access as clear
as traceries of rain on sunlit webs
their variegated bits of stuff somehow aware
they must wait out the young-old years
the last go of apple health
and then themselves shine
quietly promote the critical button
the necessary switch.
Remotes are always to hand
immortal pets
save when they aren’t
when they must be arraigned
among those boxes on that shelf
by the door from kitchen to garage
but that’s just their way.
The living-rooms of people in later life
are a circle of wagons
that tighten while everyone is out
still taking the seasons on the nose
until that’s that for that.
Then they are proper glad
of the hand-span narrows
the carpeted O
knowing that beyond has become steeps and plains
where old fires gutter
where the staircase conjures
ever and again an extra step
where the loft revolves unsorted
the moon of a planet
that once was lived right down to the metal
the finger-sifted earth.
Michael W. Thomas’s latest novel is Pilgrims at the White Horizon. Poetry collections include Batman’s Hill and Early and Late. Publications in The Antioch Review, Critical Survey and the TLS. In 2015, his novella, ‘Esp’, was shortlisted for the UK Novella Award. Links: www.michaelwthomas.co.uk ‘The Swan Village Reporter’ http://swansreport.blogspot.